Where the Religious Right in this country is concerned there is no such thing as equal rights for gay citizens. Even something as innocuous as adding sexuality and gender to the Hate Crimes act is under challenge from these "divinely" inspired bigots. The Thomas More Law Center, which prides itself as the "Sword and Shield for People of Faith" is filing a law suit challenging the constitutionality of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Looking around the country you would think the easiest thing in the world to get passed would be a jobs bill or another stimulus. The number of unemployed Americans is critically high and the business climate is pretty dismal. The growth we saw in the economy in the last quarter was due to businesses restocking inventory, the cash for clunkers program and the stimulus. Without more help, it will not be repeated.
Yet the Republicans are going to go nuts about the deficit and the debt. It does not matter to them that they were primarily responsible for running it up with two unpaid for wars, taxes cuts to the wealthiest Americans and the prescription drug bill. They are going to scream bloody murder that we are mortgaging our children's future, even though they and their fat cat buddies are not going to do anything to pay down what they spent.
One of the big scare tactics, which you are going to hear about in the next few weeks, is the amount of money we owe to the Chinese. There was even a Super Bowl commercial from Rick Berman's Astroturf group the Employment Policies Institute (you have to give it to Conservative Astroturfers they have the Orwellian names down) with cute little kiddies saying a new pledge to China and the Debt. You can see it here.
Democrats need to crack open some dictionaries and look up definitions for partisanship and bipartisanship. They then need to get in front of every camera and reporter they can find, day after day, and demand the Republicans learn the definitions as well.
In the first major move to jump-start his health care agenda after his party's loss of a filibuster-proof Senate majority, Obama on Sunday invited GOP and Democratic leaders to discuss possible compromises in a half-day, televised gathering on Feb. 25.
It comes amid widespread complaints that Democrats' efforts so far have been too partisan and secretive.
Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog's on-going campaign for torture accountability. The purpose of this series is to keep the issue of accountability under the law for torture alive. To do this every Monday the Dog writes a letter to one of the decision to makers who could move the issue of torture accountability forward. You get involved by sending your own letter, you can use the one the Dog writes, just pasted over your signature, or you can write your own. The point is to have some notice given that not everyone has forgotten about the issue of torture war crimes in the glare of HCR and the new season of American Idol.
Bennet made sure everyone knew that he was fed up with "the system":
"This place looks broken to the American people. Our ability to make these decisions is open to enormous question in the wake of the health care discussion[...]
What are we going to do differently?
What are you going to do differently?
What do we need to do differently as Democrats and Republicans to fix this institution...?"
Bennet is still pining for that old-fashioned bipartisanship that editorial writers love and senators love to use as cover. And that has failed so miserably.
Adam Green, told the Colorado Independent that for Sen. Michael Bennet, for example, the takeaway is pretty clear: "It's a political winner to do what Jared Polis just did in the House - to lead the charge to add the public option back into the bill."
That tells me he won't jeopardize his job by doing what's right, even if it won't really jeopardize his job. It's pretty obvious Bennet could do something differently here.
But Michael Bennet, while decrying the system, has played his incumbent cards forcefully since accepting his appointment from Bill Ritter. He really likes that part of the system.
(What a totally cool vase! - promoted by Something The Dog Said)
Good morning, and I'm getting impatient. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
We've had another week of calm weather here in Denver - highs in the 40s, lows in the 20s. The storm that's hitting you Easterners blew through here on Thursday. We got a bare trace of moisture, just enough to dampen the blacktop.
The snow is gradually retreating on the grass patch in the back yard, and I can see a bit of green around the edges. Because of the northern exposure, the area right next to the deck will likely remain snow-covered until mid-to-late March, unless we have extremely warm weather.
We may get a bit of snow, or rain/snow mix, over the weekend and early in the week, with lows going down into the single digits Monday night.
Rasmussen released the results of a new Colorado Senate poll Friday, and the news is particularly bad for incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet. According to the telephone survey, Bennet now trails likely Republican nominee Jane Norton by 14 points, 52%-37%. Norton's lead is up two points from January's Rasmussen poll, which showed her with a 49-37% lead.
Making matters worse for Bennet, his Democratic Challenger, former Speaker of the Colorado House Andrew Romanoff, seems to be making a push in the Rasmussen poll Romanoff trails Norton by just 7 points, 45%-38%.
If the Cons want to blame something for the loss of jobs, maybe they should look to the oil and gas corporations instead of the Democrat in the Governor's seat. If production was up in 2009 (to record levels for natural gas and near-record levels for oil) and workers were laid off, then aren't the corporations at fault?
There is a tendency in politics to see everything in a small time horizon. The fight in front of you is the one that is most important one there is. The problem with this approach is that it lets the clock run out on issues that you should be able to see coming and address before they become a catastrophe. In the late winter and early spring of 2008 everyone knew there was something very rotten in the housing market. Prices were falling and the number of loans in default or foreclosure was growing every month. This would have been a good time take action to address it, but there was a presidential primary race and a big election coming up, so it went on, basically ignored until the weakness in housing caused the financial system to collapse.
Best Western is the latest sponsor to drop Glenn Beck. Of note: they also dropped Glenn Beck in record time - less than 24 hours. Best Western ads first appeared yesterday (Feb. 4). After participants in the StopBeck effort reached out to them, Best Western sent along word this morning that they were pulling their ads.
Okay, this is short and sweet and it is a call to action. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, has placed a hold on All of the Presidents nominations. A hold is an archaic and anti-democratic way for Senators to hold up nominations. It is a kind of notice to filibuster. It is an informal practice which has held up nominations for long periods of time.
Why is Sen. Shelby placing a hold on all nominations? Does he have deep concerns about the qualifications of these candidates? Hardly. Sen. Shelby (Stickup Man, AL) wants money for his state,. Here are the projects which TMP is reporting he is to be insisting on in order to remove his hold:
A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals." Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.
- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: "[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."
By now you have probably seen the web ad from the Fiorina campaign. It was featured prominently on the Rachel Maddow Show yesterday as well as at Talking Points Memo. If you have not seen it, well you are in for a 3 minute 22 second treat! It is really, really bad in terms of production values as well as costuming, but that is not why the Dog wants to point it out.
First, take a minute to watch the video:
Sure, the whole demon-sheep thing is funny, but let's look at what the Fiorina campaign is hammering Mr. Campbell for. The gist of this attack is the man is not fiscally conservative enough. He is being pilloried for supporting raising taxes in a state have has a 20 billion dollar budget deficit.
Last week, Rep. Jared Polis (CO-02) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (ME-01) started circulating a letter to their House colleagues to drum up support to include a public option in the reconciliation process being considered by Democratic leadership. (This is what acting on behalf of your constituents looks like, if you were at all curious, Sens. Udall and Bennet.)
This week, we have a second example of bold, strategic planning on the part of House Democrats (again, take notes Senators - you're really messing things up right now). Rep. Betsy Markey (CO-04) is joining with Rep. Tom Perriello (VA-05) to introduce a bill repealing the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies!
One of the things which is often frustrating about working in politics is the ability of the public to be sure of "facts" that are just flatly wrong. The rise of Fox News and its all spun-facts or fact free reporting has exacerbated this trend on the Right. The level of real knowledge that the folks who watch those outlets have is shockingly low. The best examples of this are the persistent belief that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 or the fact that 1/3 of Republicans really do believe the President was not born in the United States.
I wanted to know a little more about President Obama's proposed 2011 budget as it related to energy items. I'm wondering what priorities his administration has, for instance. I can't say that after taking a brief look around I'm totally pleased with what I found. There is too much of a budget boost to legacy energy systems and not enough emphasis, in my opinion, to the energy systems of the future. Those future systems are what I think the government should be funding. Without a doubt, the subsidies to the dirty energy industry need to be cut off completely. They're mature to the point of being nearly monopolistic, which means they can stand or fall on their own merits now. With that in mind, here is some of what I've found.
The recent Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court has caused a lot of consternation, to say the least. The main concern is that decision is so broad that, if they care to, any cooperation could spend unlimited amounts of its collective money to influence the election of a Senator, a Representative or even state level judges and elected officials.
Today the House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on the impact of this decision and where there might be legal curbs placed on the now unlimited money. There were four witnesses today, Professor Lawrence Tribe from the Harvard School of Law, Monica Youn from the Brennan Center for Justice, Sean Parnell the President of the Center for Competitive Politics (an anti-reform group) and Donald J. Simon of Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry, LLP, a law firm that specializes in representation of Native American interests. He is also General Council for Democracy 21.
All but Mr. Parnell testified to the expected negative impact of the Citizens United ruling. Mr. Parnell, of course, does not think that the Supreme Court stripping away all limits on corporate spending on elections is a problem, as his group tends to think that if you have the biggest stick you should get what you want.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little false knowledge is even worse. Which is why it is a good thing that the Lancet has finally and fully withdrawn the study which claimed a link between autism and MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella ) vaccine. In 1998 British physician Andrew Wakefield published a study which claimed a link between the onset of autism, the MMR vaccine and particular gastrointestinal disease.
31 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a "Racist who hates White people" -- the description once adopted by Fox News's Glenn Beck. 33 percent were not sure, and 36 percent said he was not a racist.
In the past few years, a TV weatherman, Anthony Watts, has attacked organizations such as NOAA of "fraud" and "acting in bad faith" with regard to long-term surface temperature records in the U.S., among other things. He runs a propagandist website where he says whatever his backers want him to say. He uses his designation as TV weatherman to pull the wool over climate change denialists' eyes - since he's a weatherman and he doesn't "believe in" climate change, any work he does to disprove it should count for more than the work of thousands of climate scientists worldwide. It's disingenuous and disgusting, but unfortunately not shocking.
I'm going to share a bit of history about some of his propaganda efforts to set the stage for a new study to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research which expanded on one of Watts' efforts and which resulted in exactly the opposite result as the one Watts came up with. The whole affair can be summarized by saying that peer-review is the accepted path to publishing scientific information for a very good reason. Propaganda doesn't make its way through the process. Just good, hard science.
The Dog is not a fan of anger. While it can motivate in the short-term, it can very easily become like a fire, which has to consume more and more fuel to keep burning hotly. This makes it a dangerous tool to use to motivated people. Not that this stops anyone from taking the plunge and lighting fires of discontent, especially in the Tea Party movement and the Religious Right who occupy the same section of a Venn diagram of the conservatives in this country.
Good morning, and I'm getting impatient. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
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